This remarkably fresh and charming best seller took the world by storm upon its publication. It has since earned two Booker Judges' Special Recommendations and was voted one of the "International Books of the Year and the Millennium" by the Times Lit...

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

In this thoroughly entertaining book, the best-selling, critically acclaimed author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency continues the story of Mma "Precious" Ramotswe, the clever proprietor of the only detective agency in all of Botswana. Now engag...

Tears of the Giraffe

Readers everywhere have become entranced by the New York Times best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, from acclaimed author and award-winning wit Alexander McCall Smith. Each charming book in the series is a masterpiece of comic subtlety...

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a 2003 O Henry Prize winner, and was shortlisted for the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing and the 2004 Orange Prize. In Purple Hibiscus, she recounts the story of a young Nigerian girl searching for freedom. Although h...

Purple Hibiscus

The quick-witted, good-natured detective Mma "Precious" Ramotswe shines in this irresistible best seller. It continues the charming series that began with The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, hailed as one of the "International Books of the Year and t...

Morality For Beautiful Girls

International best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith delivers another delightful tale from his critically acclaimed No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Precious Ramotswe's comfortable existence as the only detective in Botswana is suddenly rat...

The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Precious Ramotswe has taken on two puzzling cases. First, she is approached by the lawyer Mma Sheba, who is the executor of a deceased farmer’s estate. Mma Sheba has a feeling that the young man who has stepped forward may be falsely impersonating th...

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has become a worldwide phenomenon thanks to the appeal of endearing protagonist Precious Ramotswe and the author’s charmingly quirky prose. In this 13th installment, Mma Ramotswe’s attent...

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

The 10th entry in the internationally best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series finds Precious Ramotswe investigating a mystery that hits close to home. When she asks her dependable husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, to fix her tiny white van, Pr...

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

This 12th entry from Alexander McCall Smith’s New York Times best-selling series showcases the humanity and matchless wit that define Precious Ramotswe. While both Precious and Grace Makutsi are puzzled by prophetic dreams, life goes on at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Precious finds herself investigating a case of rural jealousy, while Grace inches closer to her wedding.

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

In this latest installment of the beloved and best-selling series, Mma Ramotswe must contend with her greatest challenge yet - a vacation!  Business is slow at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, so slow in fact that for the first time in her estimab...

The Woman Who Walked In Sunshine

Listeners will agree that this touching and dramatic new installment in Alexander McCall Smith’s beloved and best-selling series is the finest yet. In this story, Precious Ramotswe deals with issues of mistaken identity and great fortune against the ...

The Double Comfort Safari Club

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are approached by their part-time colleague, Mr. Polopetsi, with a troubling story: A woman, accused of being rude to a valued customer, has been wrongly dismissed from her job at an office furniture store. Never one to l...

The House of Unexpected Sisters

New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith's critically acclaimed No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series continues in this engaging book that won the first ever Saga Award for Wit, given to the wittiest British book of the year.  Mma Ra...

The Full Cupboard of Life

From internationally best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith comes the seventh novel in the phenomenally popular and endlessly charming series that began with The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Once again Botswana's only female detective, Mma Ram...

Blue Shoes and Happiness

The delightful 17th installment of the ever-popular, perennially best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.  Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's premier lady detective, is a little short on help. The codirector of the agency, Grace Makutsi, is bus...

Precious and Grace

In the life of Precious Ramotswe, a woman duly proud of her fine traditional build, there is rarely a dull moment, and in the latest installment in the universally beloved No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, there is much happening on Zebra Drive ...

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

In the latest installment of this infinitely enjoyable and best-selling series, Precious Ramotswe is doing what she does best--helping people with their problems and enjoying the simple pleasures of life.  Mma Ramotswe is busy investigating her lates...

The Miracle at Speedy Motors

In this delightful 15th installment, Mma Ramotswe has her hands full both at home and in the office. To add to her current challenges, her devoted partner, Grace Makutsi, has decided to branch out on her own and open The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe. B...

The Handsome Man's Deluxe Café

Precious Ramotswe dips her toe into the world of politics in the newest addition to the beloved and best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.  When Mma Potokwane suggests to Mma Ramotswe that she run for a seat on the city council, Mma Ramo...

The Colors of All the Cattle

Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender a...

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

In the latest book in the widely beloved No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe takes on a case for a childhood acquaintance and finds that family relationships are always a tricky proposition - even for Botswana's premier female de...

To the Land of Long Lost Friends

Here is the first full-length biography of a much maligned but astonishingly colourful Queen of England. In Newgate Street, in the city of London, stand the meagre ruins of Christ Church. On the same site once stood a royal mausoleum set to rival Wes...

Isabella

When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger". Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him...

Scribbling the Cat

Newbery Medal, 1997.  Eleven-year-old Nhamo is running for her life. When the village witch finder decrees that she must marry a cruel stranger to propitiate an evil spirit, her only recourse is to steal a fishing boat and go looking for a father she...

A Girl Named Disaster

Lily Tuck is a National Book Award winner and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist who is praised by The San Francisco Chronicle for her “knack for shaving a scene to its essence.” Set in the late 19th century, The News from Paraguay traces the colorful, ill-...

News From Paraguay

With richly evocative images and wonderfully entertaining anecdotes, Caroline Alexander transports you to the dense interior of equatorial Gabon. In One Dry Season, she chronicles her adventures as she makes her way alone through dangerously primitiv...

One Dry Season

Mercia Murray is a woman of fifty-two years who has been left. Abandoned by her partner in Scotland, where she has been living for twenty-five years, Mercia returns to her homeland of South Africa to find her family overwhelmed by alcoholism and secr...

October

Baby Ruva lives with her giraffe family in a beautiful jungle. One sad day, she is kidnapped and taken across the ocean to a horrible zoo. Thanks to four wise and magical friends she has met along the way, the baby giraffe is managing to survive, but...

The Warm Place

Art & Literature

Africa

Humor & Satire

South African-born Lisette Lecat has captivated scores of listeners with the adventures at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, where Mma Ramotswe parks her tiny white van. Whether describing bush tea or the wisdom of Botswanan morality, Lisette's reading enlivens author Alexander McCall Smith's keen understanding of "ubuntu"--loosely translated as "humanity towards others." Lisette shares a love of Africa in other resonant portrayals of African literature and history, including DON'T LET'S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT, and works by Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Farmer, and Caroline Alexander. While sub-Saharan locales may be a specialty, Lisette brings a nuanced familiarity with place to other settings as well, drawing on her world travels and her knowl

Listen to Lisette Lecat

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